[IP] Apparent Suicide of Gary Webb ,Investigative Reporter who exposed CIA / Contra Drug Connection
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Subject: Apparent Suicide of Gary Webb ,Investigative Reporter who
exposed CIA / Contra Drug Connection
Author: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger@xxxxxxx>
Date: 14th December 2004 6:59:39 pm
R.I.P. Gary Webb -- Unembedded Reporter
Published on Monday, December 13, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
by Jeff Cohen
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1213-31.htm
Gary Webb, a courageous investigative journalist who was the
target of one of the most ferocious media attacks on any
reporter in recent history, was found dead Friday after an
apparent suicide.
In August 1996, Webb wrote one of the first pieces of journalism
that reached a massive audience thanks to the Internet: an
explosive 20,000 word, three-part series documenting links
between cocaine traffickers, the crack epidemic of the 1980s and
the CIA-organized right-wing Nicaraguan Contra army of that
era. The series sparked major interest in the social justice and
African-American communities, leading to street protests,
constant discussion on black-oriented talk radio and demands by
Congressional Black Caucus members for a federal
investigation. But weeks later, Webb suffered a furious backlash
at the hands of national media unaccustomed to seeing their role
as gatekeepers diminished by the emerging medium known as the
WorldWideWeb.
Webb's explosive San Jose Mercury News series documented that
funders of the Contras included drug traffickers who played a
role in the crack epidemic that hit Los Angeles and other
cities. Webb's series focused heavily on Oscar Danilo Blandon, a
cocaine importer and federal informant, who once testified in
federal court that "whatever we were running in L.A., the profit
was going to the Contra revolution." Blandon further testified
that Colonel Enrique Bermudez, a CIA asset who led the Contra
army against Nicaragua's leftwing Sandinista government, knew
the funds were from drug running. (Bermudez was a colonel during
the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua.)
Webb reported that U.S. law enforcement agents complained that
the CIA had squelched drug probes of Blandon and his partner
Norwin Meneses in the name of "national security." Blandon's
drugs flowed into L.A. and elsewhere thanks to the legendary
"Freeway" Ricky Donnell Ross, a supplier of crack to the Crips
and Bloods gangs.
While Webb's series could be faulted for some overstatement in
presenting its powerful new evidence (a controversial graphic on
the Mercury News website superimposed a person smoking crack
over the CIA seal), the fresh documentation mightily moved
forward the CIA-Contra-cocaine story that national media had
been trying to bury for years. Any exaggeration in the Mercury
News presentation was dwarfed by a mendacious, triple-barreled
attack on Webb that came from the New York Times, Washington
Post and Los Angeles Times.
The Post and others criticized Webb for referring to the Contras
of the so-called Nicaraguan Democratic Force as "the CIA's army"
-- an absurd objection since by all accounts, including those of
Contra leaders, the CIA set up the group, selected its leaders
and paid their salaries, and directed its day-to-day battlefield
strategies.
The Post devoted much ink to exposing what Webb readily
acknowledged -- that while he could document Contra links to
cocaine importing, he was not able to identify specific CIA
officials who knew of the drug flow. The ferocity of the attack
on Webb led the Post's ombudsman to note that the three national
newspapers "showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws" in
the Webb series than for probing the important issue Webb had
raised: U.S. government relations with drug smuggling.
The L.A. Times' anti-Webb package was curious for its handling
of Freeway Ricky Ross, the dealer Webb had authoritatively
linked to Contra-funder Blandon. Two years before Webb's
revelations, the Times had reported: "If there was a criminal
mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one
outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles'
streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick."
In a profile of Ross headlined "Deposed King of Crack," the
Times went on and on about "South-Central's first millionaire
crack lord" and how Ross' "coast to coast conglomerate was
selling more than $550,000 rocks a day, a staggering turnover
that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars."
But two months after Webb's series linked Ricky Ross to Contra
cocaine, the L.A. Times told a totally different story, now
seeking to minimize Ross's role in the crack epidemic: Ross was
just one of many "interchangeable characters" -- "dwarfed" by
other dealers.
The reporter who'd written the 1994 Ross profile was the one
called on to write the front-page 1996 critique of Webb; media
critic Norman Solomon noted that it "reads like a show-trial
recantation."
The hyperbolic reaction against Webb's series can only be
understood in the context of years of bias and animosity toward
the Contra-cocaine story on the part of many national media. Bob
Parry and Brian Barger first reported on Contra-cocaine
smuggling for AP in 1985, at a time when President Reagan was
hailing the Contras as "the moral equivalent of our Founding
Fathers." The story got little pickup.
In 1987 the House Narcotics Committee chaired by Charles Rangel
probed Contra-drug allegations and found a need for further
investigation. After the Washington Post distorted the facts
with a headline "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to
Drug Smuggling," the paper refused to run Rangel's letter
correcting the record.
That same year, Time magazine correspondent Laurence Zuckerman
and a colleague found serious evidence of Contra links to
cocaine trafficking, but their story was blocked from
publication by top editors. A senior editor admitted privately
to Zuckerman: "Time is institutionally behind the Contras. If
this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you'd have no
trouble getting it in the magazine." (The N.Y Times and
Washington Post both endorsed aid to the Contra army, despite
massive documentation from human rights monitors that they
targeted civilians for violence and terror.)
In 1989, when Sen. John Kerry released a report condemning
U.S. government complicity with Contra-connected drug
traffickers, the Washington Post ran a brief report loaded with
GOP criticisms of Kerry, while Newsweek dubbed Kerry a "randy
conspiracy buff."
In this weekend's mainstream media reports on Gary Webb's death,
it's no surprise that a key point has been overlooked -- that
the CIA's internal investigation sparked by the Webb series and
resulting furor contained startling admissions. CIA Inspector
General Frederick Hitz reported in October 1998 that the CIA
indeed had knowledge of the allegations linking many Contras and
Contra associates to cocaine trafficking, that Contra leaders
were arranging drug connections from the beginning and that a
CIA informant told the agency about the activity.
When Webb stumbled onto the Contra-cocaine story, he couldn't
have imagined the fury with which big-foot reporters from
national dailies would come at him -- a barrage that ultimately
drove him out of mainstream journalism. But he fought back with
courage and dignity, writing a book (Dark Alliance: The CIA, the
Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion) with his side of the
story and insisting that facts matter more than established
power or ideology. He deserves to be remembered in the proud
tradition of muckrakers like Ida Tarbell, George Seldes and
I.F. Stone.
In this era of "embedded reporters," an unembedded journalist
like Gary Webb will be sorely missed.
Jeff Cohen www.jeffcohen.org is the founder of the media watch
group FAIR www.fair.org. For more background, see
http://www.fair.org/issues-news/contra-crack.html and
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/121304.html
--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com
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